Checking Out Southwest’s "Specialty Planes" Fleet

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Southwest Airlines. I like how they are a bit different than other airlines- no pre-assigned seats, no baggage fees, snacks served on most flights and a very friendly staff. They also offer first time flyer certificates to kids at times which is a nice little perk.

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While reading online last month I came across a link for some Southwest planes which have very interesting paint jobs.

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The link was for a page called Specialty Planes.

On the page, Southwest was introducing Penguin One, the newest addition to their SeaWorld Specialty Fleet.

The plane looked really awesome with the “specialty” paint job. It features the SeaWorld logo along with a couple of swimming penguins and three others standing up. (Maybe they are part of a family?)

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Penguin One was introduced due to the retirement of Shamu One, the first of Southwest’s SeaWorld specialty fleet back in 1988. In 1990 two additional SeaWorld inspired planes were introduced- Shamu Two and Three.

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Besides the SeaWorld Specialty Fleet, Southwest also has (based on an image on the page) 10 other planes with unique paint jobs. Most of these planes are dedicated to a U.S. state.

Check them out in the graphic below:

Find out some “fun facts” and “painting facts” about Penguin One on Southwest’s Specialty Planes page here.

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After looking over the Southwest page I wondered who else had planes painted with a unique or interesting design?

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I did a quick Google search and came up with an article from April posted on Weather.com called 15 Colorful Airplane Paint Jobs. There are some pretty creative and impressive looking planes shown in this article too. A couple of my favorites were the Lord of the Rings plane and Sochi Olympics Mascot plane.

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If you’ve seen an interesting or oddly painted plane at the airport, please let us know what it looked like by leaving a comment below.

8 thoughts on “Checking Out Southwest’s "Specialty Planes" Fleet”

Need an update for this page. Missing a couple paint jobs to date. I have been a passenger on all 3 shamu models, lone star and triple crown. I love southwest and wish they had other destination they fly into. Also wish they would have upgrades like first class, but hey, the staff and crew on the plane and the rest that make up the company it self are the best. Never a dull moment on one of their planes.